Since 1988, USIP has awarded 427 non-residential fellowships to doctoral candidates enrolled in U.S. universities, many of whom have gone on to have distinguished careers in research, teaching and policymaking. Since 2017, USIP has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative to build upon the successes of the Peace Scholar program.

USIP-Funded Peace Scholar Fellows:

• Nicholas Blanchette (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Strategies of Capability Revelation: How States Reveal Information about Advanced Nuclear and Conventional Military Technologies.” 
• Eleanor Freund (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Strategies of Security Cooperation: External Balancing in Chinese Foreign Policy, 1949-Present.” 
• Mirella Pretell Gomero (Syracuse University), “Beyond the Oil Pipeline: Environmental Injustices and Indigenous Women’s Struggles in the Northern Peruvian Amazon.” 
• Isabel Güiza-Gómez (University of Notre Dame), “Landing Peace: Rural-Poor Mobilization and Land Redistribution in Civil War Political Transitions.” 
• Eyal Hanfling (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Lurking but Learning: The Effects of WhatsApp on Intergroup Cooperation in India.” 
• Nicolás Torres-Echeverry (University of Chicago), “Between War and Peace: Political Organizing in Twenty-First Century Colombia.”

Minerva-Funded Peace Scholar Fellows:

• Nangyalai Attal (University of Massachusetts), “Jihad Literacy: The Legacy of US-sponsored Textbooks for Children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” 
• Lisa de Sousa Dias (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Escaping Violence, Returning Home: Disparate Political Belonging Among Refugees and Internally Displaced Populations in Post-Conflict Mozambique.” 
• Julian Gerez (Columbia University), “The Political Economy of Supply-Side Counternarcotics.” 
• Elizabeth Good (Northwestern University), “Willing and Able: Power Dynamics and Women’s Representation in Peace Processes.”
• Suha Hassen (George Mason University), “Investigating How and Why People Join the ISIS Terrorist Organization: A Comparative Study of Iraqi, Arab, and International Ex-fighters Inside the Iraqi Prisons.” 
• Whitney Hough (Teachers College, Columbia University), “Teachers as Transformative Agents During Protracted Conflict: A Case Study of Cameroon.” 
• Katherine Irajpanah (Harvard University), “Small Arms and Influence: How Decolonial Norms Disrupted Military Superiority.” 
• Julia Raven (University of California at Berkeley), “The Origins of Ethnic Stacking: The Design and Durability of Colonial Militaries.” 
• Nikoleta Sremac (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities), “History in Whose Hands? Gendering Collective Memory of the Yugoslav Wars in Serbia.” 
• Kristin Weis (George Mason University), “Arctic Change: Charting the Relationship Between Sense of Place, Social-ecological Resilience, and Conflict.” 
• Lily Wojtowicz (American University), “Extended Nuclear Deterrence: How Allies Assess Credibility During Credibility Crises.” 
• Ilyssa Yahmi (Temple University), “Business in Conflict: The Effects of Smuggling on the Production of Violence.”

USIP/Minerva-Funded Peace Scholar Fellows:

• María Ballesteros (Harvard University), “How Rebels Become States: Essays on Post Civil War State Building.”

USIP congratulates these distinguished scholars for their accomplishments and looks forward to supporting future generations of peacebuilders. The competition for the 2025-26 cohort opens in September 2024. If you or someone you know is interested in applying to the program, visit the Peace Scholar Fellowship Program page on USIP’s website.